Jyoti Mishra's website

Destination Star Trek 3

This weekend just gone, 3-5 October, I had the wonderful good fortune to be able to go to Destination Star Trek 3 at the Excel Centre, London.

I arrived a bit before my mate and fellow Trekkie, Matt and I quickly got changed into my Voyager costume. Once we’d got ready, we hit the main hall and were quickly surrounded by all manner of geeks in a variety of uniforms and outfits.

IT WAS AWESOME!

This was my outfit:

The pips aren’t quite right but I was very happy with it for the forty-five quid it cost from Cosplaysky. I added the metal badge myself, that was quite expensive at twenty-one quid but worth it.

So, we walked round the exhibits, spotted stars, stood at the end of massive queues trying to spot other stars, took pictures of random splendidly-costumed fans: everything you’re meant to do a con.

The whole weekend was full of fun and surprises, I met so many lovely, new people there and have since added a few of them on Instagram and Tumblr. I also met this suave motherfucker:

KARL FUCKING URBAN! One of my fave current actors and beautiful as McCoy in the reboot films.

There were also parties on the Friday and Saturday nights and they were silly fun, too. Loads of people asked to get their pic taken with me and I didn’t really understand why but Matt said it was because I stood out and looked quite imposing? I have no idea but here I am towering over fellow trekkies:

Looking at that pic, I guess I do look like I could chuck someone out of an airlock fairly easily. I swear, I’m not that big really. I mean, I’m fat, obviously but I look like Starfleet Security here. (HEY, ABRAMS, IF YOU WANT FAT, BROWN SECURITY FOR ST3, GIMME A RING!)

Then, courtesy of the lovely girl on the bottom right of this pic:

I GOT MADE UP AS A VULCAN! BOOM!

Although I think I look a bit more Romulan, should have had some tatts put on.

I felt good but I couldn’t compete with the effort these peeps had gone to:

Or these:

Or:

Or:

There’s really waaay too many pics to post up on here but they’re all in a handy little gallery which you can see by clicking here.

The whole weekend was inspirational for me. Star Trek remains the most powerful vision of a utopian future in popular culture. Where other films / TV shows are dystopian, with us being killed off by nukes / viruses / uppity AIs, Trek offers hope. Trek posits a future where we can learn from our mistakes and eventually end up with a moneyless society where war, poverty and disease have all been eliminated. No guesses for what I think that economy is based upon.

This vision of a better future, of a future where humanity isn’t segregated by all the -isms that fracture us now, was mirrored totally in the Trekkies at the con. Yes, I loved meeting Denise Crosby and Brent Spiner and Karl Urban but the main attraction of DST3 was the other fans. Intelligent, funny, inspiring, silly, adventurous, the people of Trek are diamonds.

So, if you’ve never been to a Trek con before, make sure you don’t miss out on the next one near you. Honestly, you won’t meet a nicer bunch of people in your life.